By: HISTORY.com Editors

1929

Martin Luther King Jr. born

HISTORY.com Editors

Martin Luther King Jr.

Bettmann Archive/Getty Images

Published: February 09, 2010

Last Updated: January 31, 2025

On January 15, 1929, Martin Luther King Jr. is born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a Baptist minister. King received a doctorate degree in theology and in 1955 helped organize the first major protest of the African American civil rights movement: the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott. Influenced by Mohandas Gandhi, he advocated civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance to segregation in the South. The peaceful protests he led throughout the American South were often met with violence, but King and his followers persisted, and the movement gained momentum.

Martin Luther King Jr. - Call to Activism

On the night of January 27, 1956, when he was just 27 years old, Martin Luther King Jr. received a threatening phone call that would cause his life to change forever.

A powerful orator, King appealed to Christian and American ideals and won growing support from the federal government and Northern whites. In 1963, Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph led the massive March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom; the event’s grand finale was King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Two hundred and fifty thousand people gathered outside the Lincoln Memorial to hear the stirring speech.

In 1964, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment, which abolished the poll tax, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities. Later that year, King became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize (in 2014 Malala Yousafzai became the youngest to receive the prize at age 17). In the late 1960s, King openly criticized U.S. involvement in Vietnam and turned his efforts to winning economic rights for poor Americans. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.

Timeline

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1559

Elizabeth I crowned Queen of England

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1777

Vermont declares independence from colony of New York

Having recognized the need for their territory to assert its independence from both Britain and New York and remove themselves from the war they were waging against each other, a convention of future Vermonters assembles in Westminster and declares independence from the crown of Great Britain and the colony of New York on January 15, […]

1831

“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is finished

On January 15, 1831, Victor Hugo finishes writing Notre Dame de Paris, also known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Distracted by other projects, Hugo had continually postponed his deadlines for delivering the book to his publishers, but once he sat down to write it, he completed the novel in only four months. Hugo, the […]

1870

First appearance of the Democratic Party donkey

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1919

Boston shocked by deadly molasses flood

Fiery hot molasses floods the streets of Boston on January 15, 1919, killing 21 people and injuring scores of others. The molasses burst from a huge tank at the United States Industrial Alcohol Company building in the heart of the city. The United States Industrial Alcohol building was located on Commercial Street near North End […]

1919

Opposition leaders are murdered in failed coup in Berlin

A coup launched in Berlin by a group of radical socialist revolutionaries is brutally suppressed by right-wing paramilitary units from January 10 to January 15, 1919; the group’s leaders, Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, are murdered. Germany’s long, ultimately losing struggle on the battlefield—culminating in the signing of the armistice in November 1918—and dismal conditions […]

1951

The “Witch of Buchenwald” is sentenced to prison

Ilse Koch, wife of the commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp, is sentenced to life imprisonment in a court in West Germany. Ilse Koch was nicknamed the “Witch of Buchenwald” for her extraordinary sadism. Born in Dresden, Germany, Ilse, a librarian, married SS. Col. Karl Koch in 1936. Colonel Koch, a man with his own […]

1967

Packers beat Chiefs in first Super Bowl

On January 15, 1967, the Green Bay Packers of the National Football League (NFL) smash the American Football League (AFL)’s Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10, in the first-ever AFL-NFL World Championship, later known as Super Bowl I, at Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles. Founded in 1960 as a rival to the NFL, the AFL was still […]

1968

The Jeannette Rankin Brigade: 5,000 women march against Vietnam War

On January 15, 1968, an 87-year-old Jeannette Rankin leads 5,000 women—nicknamed the “Jeannette Rankin Brigade”—in a march in Washington, D.C. against the Vietnam War. The march is a capstone of Rankin’s long career as a suffragist, pacifist and the first woman elected to U.S. Congress. Inspired by Mahatma Gahndi, Rankin organized a group of 5,000 women […]

1972

“American Pie” hits #1 on the pop charts

On January 15, 1972, “American Pie,”, an epic poem in musical form that has long been etched in the American popular consciousness, hits #1 on the Billboard charts. The story of Don McLean’s magnum opus begins almost 13 years before its release, on a date with significance well-known to any American who was alive and […]

1981

“Hill Street Blues” begins run

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1990

Soviets send troops into Azerbaijan

In the wake of vicious fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces in Azerbaijan, the Soviet government sends in 11,000 troops to quell the conflict. The fighting—and the official Soviet reaction to it—was an indication of the increasing ineffectiveness of the central Soviet government in maintaining control in the Soviet republics, and of Soviet leader Mikhail […]

2001

Wikipedia launches

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2009

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Citation Information

Article title: Martin Luther King Jr. born
Author: HISTORY.com Editors
Website Name: History
URL: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/january-15/martin-luther-king-jr-born

Date Accessed: May 28, 2025
Publisher: A&E Television Networks
Last Updated: January 31, 2025
Original Published Date: February 09, 2010

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